Zia, Enrichment, and a Mustache

This 2014 interview with Ambassador John Wolf has a great account about a meeting between then-Ambassador to Pakistan Deane Hinton and President Zia:

The meeting was just the President, Ambassador, the Foreign Secretary and me (as note takers). The ambassador was saying something like, “Mr. President…your enrichment is over the 8 percent redline we’ve discussed…you need to move back.”

Zia sat patiently quietly twisting his mustache like the villain (Snidely Whiplash) in the old Bullwinkle cartoons. At the end, still twisting his mustache, “Ambassador, there are some times when you just have to trust your friends, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.” I got it all then went back to dictate the reporting cable. But the DCM had just remonstrated POL for too colorful writing (I think he termed it “dilettantism”), so I left out the mustache references.

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